Salil Parekh to draw one-third of Sikka’s remuneration

Parekh will draw a salary of Rs 16.25 crore which includes Rs 6.5 crore of fixed salary and Rs 9.75 crore of variable pay.

Infosys has informed BSE that its new CEO, Salil Parekh will draw an annual fixed salary of Rs 6.5 crore. The fixed pay will be paid monthly in accordance with the Company’s normal payroll practices.

Parekh joined Infosys on Jan 2 this year.

From the beginning of new financial year, which is April 1, 2018, Parekh will be eligible for a variable pay of Rs 9.75 crore which will be subject to the Company’s achievement of several milestones. For the interim period till March 31, Parekh will get a variable pay of Rs 2.37 crore.

It is also stated that the under any circumstances, variable pay in a fiscal will not exceed 125 per cent of the target variable pay.

However, Parekh’s pay is still lower than his predecessor Vishal Sikka.

In a fiscal, Parekh will withdraw a maximum of Rs 16.25 crore. In comparison, in 2015-16, Sikka drew an annual package of a whopping Rs 49 crore – more than three time of what Parekh will get.

In fact, Sikka was one of the most expensive CEOs in the IT sector. In 2015-16, the then TCS chief N Chandrasekaran was paid a package of Rs 25.6 crore and Wipro CEO Abidali Neemuchwala’s annual pay was Rs 12 crore.

Infosys founder Narayan Murthy was against such high salaries for the CEO. In fact, he objected when Sikka’s salary was again raised by 60-70% per cent. Murthy had written to the board stating that a 60-70 per cent increase in compensation for a top-level person when the compensation for most of the employees in the company was increased by just 6 per cent to 8 per cent was improper.

“This is grossly unfair to the majority of the Infosys employees including project managers, delivery managers, analysts, programmers, salespeople in the field, entry level engineers, clerks and office boys who are toiling hard to make the company better. The impact of such a decision will likely erode the trust and faith of the employees in the management and the board,” he had said.

This letter came against the backdrop of proposed 35 per cent hike in COO Pravin Rao’s annual pay.